“The Miss Kydd formidable.” Billie craned her jaw toward Julia’s cheek. “Taken a fancy to us lit’ry worker bees? Every now and then something tasty buzzes along.” She nipped at the trousers of a passing fellow carrying two empty glasses. He swerved and exhaled an affectionate vulgarity.
“Have you heard anything about Eva Pruitt?” Julia asked, shamelessly inviting gossip.
Billie exchanged her glass for a full one from a nearby tray. “Disappeared. Melted right back into the muck. Pablo’s moping, but he should have known better. I mean, who was she? Who’d ever heard of her a year ago? She just wiggled what she claimed to be her darky ass and mentioned a manuscript, and the boys went wild to buy it. It smelled funny from the start, you know. I don’t just mean her ass.”
Julia submerged her revulsion in a prolonged consideration of gin. At least Wallace, it seemed, had been good to his word. He’d found her a deep hiding place, well out of harm’s way. Julia was glad Eva was safe, but also troubled. For the past two days she’d repeatedly dialed the telephone number that supposedly would reach her, and each time it rang unanswered. At Philip’s badgering, Kessler had confirmed its accuracy but claimed he didn’t know whose number it was, only that it reached someone who could relay a message to Eva. Except that it hadn’t, and no one had relayed a word. Julia knew little more than Billie and the others. If that route was closed to her, she’d have to find another.
Today was Thursday. In a wild fancy Julia imagined Eva and Jerome were missing in the best possible sense—onboard a ship as planned, bound for Le Havre. Julia wished she had somehow found a way to honor those tickets, paid for at such a dear price. They’d be sipping champagne before dinner, celebrating their first day of freedom—in a sense of the word far beyond what Eva had meant that night in Liveright’s bathroom.
“Nothing else?” Julia prodded Billie. “Any other suspects?”
Billie watched a striking dark-haired woman cross the hall toward the piano. “Who cares? Timson was a shit. Pruitt’s finished too, and they can cuddle up in hell together if you ask me.” She waved when the woman turned. “Nice chatting, peach fuzz. We both have quarry yet to bag tonight. Just don’t cross my line of fire.” She winked.
Billie made straight for the brunette now beckoning to her with a gesture as much command as welcome. She was older than Julia, thirtyish, and like Billie attractive in a predatory sort of way. Duveen materialized to light the cigarette she appended to a long ivory holder. Her very glance, or hint of one, seemed to telegraph her wishes. Hatless, her hair was sleek and smooth, cut in a longish bob. Not a strand strayed from its assigned position. She wore a deep-blue ensemble dress with a narrow pleated skirt and double-breasted jacket that reached her thighs, the garb of a woman not to be trifled with. A lady banker perhaps, Julia mused, or lady lawyer—if such creatures existed in America.
“Good to see you, Miss Kydd,” a formally polite voice said over her shoulder. “I hoped you’d turn up again at one of Pablo’s Thursdays. No one else talks so prettily about the Cuala.”
Julia met Logan Lanier’s greeting with genuine warmth. The earnest young poet touched something in her, and she hoped they could become friends. Part of her was thinking as a publisher, always alert for promising writers not yet able to command high prices for their work, but a greater part simply liked his boyish face. She handed him a small parcel from beside her handbag, stashed beneath one of the dining chairs. “It’s only a trifle, but I thought it belonged in your collection more than mine.”
Folding back the protective glassine, Lanier gazed at the bright blues and reds of a pamphlet in a new wrapper of French curl marbled paper. He opened to the title page of Yeats’s In the Seven Woods, a slim thing produced in 1903 by the Yeats sisters at their Cuala Press studio in Dublin. His cheeks swelled into dark plums of embarrassed gratitude. “It’s beautiful, Miss Kydd.”
She asked him to call her Julia. After the caustic vinegar of Billie Fischer, his company was clear, cool water. His regard was pure, his interests genuine, his manner attentive. With a pang Julia missed Eva, whose company in this very room two weeks ago had moved her in the same ways. Both Eva and Logan had a depth, a quiet glow of intelligence, that was easily lost—and doubly appealing—in the garish too much of Duveen’s parties.
He nodded with courteous gravity. “Then Logan, please.”
This pact of at least a desire for friendship pleased Julia. “It was languishing in a box of my father’s old ephemera,” she explained. “I’m glad to find it an appreciative home. I have drawers full of these Cockerell sheets, which make lovely new coats for such little orphans.”
He seemed about to expire from a mixture of pleasure and excruciating shyness, so she went on. “It’s a token of congratulations as well.”
They edged away from the jostling traffic. Ten minutes earlier, Duveen had crowed to announce Logan’s recent second-place poetry prize from Opportunity magazine. His poem would be published in the August issue.
“Thank you.” Eyes downcast, their gaze as velvety as his voice, he added that the prize carried no monetary reward.
Even so, national recognition was a triumph for any young poet, particularly a colored one. “Pablo’s certainly proud. He’s a great champion of your talent. I gather he’s urging Goldsmith to publish your first book. That must please you no end.”
Logan held the pamphlet to his chest. He seemed to struggle over how to respond. “I’m grateful for Pablo’s help with the prize,
